Acheron
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.Doom. She had thought she'd never see him again.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

The Ark chamber of the facility at Olduvai was sterile and smelled like recycled air. The guy they sent to meet her, a Lieutenant Huengs, was also sterile and smelled like recycled bureaucrat. Buffy tried to remember why she'd volunteered for this operation, and then remembered the bet she'd lost with Dawn. She was so going to get her back.

"The UAC Marines should be here soon," said Huengs, who was listening to the device in his ear. "ETA ten minutes. They're at the Ark."

The Ark had been...weird. She wasn't sure she liked being split apart into millions and millions of pieces and hurled to another planet. What if something important, say like her flawless taste in shoes or maybe her occipital lobe, got lost somewhere along the way? Dawn, however, had vetoed having Willow teleport her in. Something about sending the UAC into frothing hysteria over security and things that shouldn't be possible, like faster than light travel without Ark involvement. Given her choices—spending decades getting there by the space equivalent of a bus or going through the Ark—she'd decided to listen to Dawn. Her many, many degrees in everything and anything had to be worth something.

Olduvai was clean and white and filled with people in lab coats who stole glances at her and whispered behind their clipboards. No one outside the upper ranks of the administration knew that an Operative was coming, so either someone had been unable to keep their mouth shut or she was just really obvious. The clothes she wore—leather pants, boots, a black, long-sleeved sweater, and a leather duster—being what they were, she was going with gossip.

"Operative," Huengs was saying. "We have confirmation. RRTS is coming in. Would you like to see the dossier?"

"Big tough guys with gun fetishes, right?" Buffy shrugged. "I think I know the type."

Huengs didn't smile, but then he, too, resembled a big tough guy with a gun fetish. Buffy would have been willing to bet, despite her recent losing streak, that at some point he had wanted or still wanted to be a Marine, but either couldn't hack it or went into the private sector for the money. Whichever it was, he still wasn't about to mouth off to an Operative.

The technician, Pinzerowski, was ogling her shamelessly. Buffy let him both because she felt extremely bad for him and because she felt that if push came to shove, she could probably take him. The cybernetic chair gave her the creeps, though. If she were cut in half and Dawn managed to somehow salvage everything from the belly up, would she want to live like that?

_No, _she thought, watching Pinzerowski catch her eye and look down, embarrassed,_ I wouldn't._

Then again, maybe that didn't mean anything. A fifty-year downward spiral into depression and apathy had a way of impairing a girl's judgment.

The computer voice announced the last part of the sequence and the Ark activated, a floating ball of liquid, shimmering gray, very sci-fi. Andrew would have orgasmed on the spot, a thought that Buffy immediately tried to scrub from her brain.

"Coming through," called Pinzerowski, and then the first UAC Marine hit the ground at Olduvai in a spray of vomit.

Which, of course, was when her cell phone went off.

"Oops," she said, as Pinzerowski, Huengs, _and_ the spitting, choking Marine all turned to look at her. "Sorry. One second."

She turned and walked away down the corridor that branched off into the main building, pulling out her cell while she did. Caller ID said She Who Must Not Be Named, and Buffy decided that she was going to let Dawn explain to Wheelchair Guy and Security Man exactly how a girl got cell phone reception on Mars.

Stopping just before the huge, reinforced hatch that led into the main facility, ignoring the looks she was getting from the guards and technicians, she put the phone to her ear.

"I know you want to kill me," said Dawn's voice.

Buffy went from suspicious to paranoid in zero flat. "What?"

"It was Xander's idea," said Dawn, and in the background someone who sounded like Xander went "What? No! No, it wasn't! Don't hurt me!"

"What are you talking about?" said Buffy, now paranoid _and_ irritated. "What was his idea? Why am I going to kill you?"

There was an ominous silence.

A click let her know that the line had disconnected. Buffy stared at the cell phone in her hand, wondering if her sister had really just hung up on her.

"Operative?"

Buffy put the cell phone on vibrate and tucked it into a pocket. Huengs was coming up behind her, expression carefully neutral.

"RRTS is ready for briefing," he said perfunctorily. "Sergeant Mahonin has been informed that you were waiting for him."

Sergeant Mahonin was probably ready to bite nails and spit rust. Buffy knew they hadn't told RRTS exactly who would be going along on their mission, and nobody wanted an Operative on their doorstep. The presence of one automatically upgraded the situation from routine to cluster.

Now she wished she _had_ read the personal files. Or at least had Dawn read it. She didn't know how Sergeant Mahonin was going to react to her, not that it really mattered. If the Initiative had taught her anything all those years ago, it was that lower-level grunts hardly ever questioned their orders, and the situation had not improved over time. As long as she didn't grossly violate the Geneva Convention, they weren't likely to mutiny. Sergeant Mahonin didn't have to like the Operative. He just had to take orders.

Buffy didn't let any of that bother her as she walked back with Huengs. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it. There was a two-week vacation in Tahiti waiting for her when she was done, and she had already bought her bikini.

Another of the Marines had thrown up. The mess was everywhere and they all looked embarrassed. Throwing up was one thing—throwing up when there was an Operative around was another. The smell was really bad. They were never going to let those guys forget it.

She picked out Sergeant Mahonin right away. He was kind of hard to miss. He watched her come with a raised eyebrow. The Marine standing next to him and wiping vomit from his lips stopped to whistle, long and loud.

"Maybe this won't be such a loss after all," he said slowly, looking her up and down. "You like a man in uniform, baby?"

Pinzerowski coughed. Huengs looked as if he was biting his tongue.

"Sergeant," said Huengs, "This is the Operative."

The silence couldn't have been more painful. Buffy was enjoying the looks on their faces when several people shifted awkwardly, and then she got a good look at the man standing quietly in the back.

The shock was total. Buffy thought maybe she'd even fainted briefly, because the next thing she heard was the sergeant making introductions.

"Gregory McGreevy, handle ID 'Duke.' Gannon Roark, ID 'Destroyer.' Eric Fantom, ID..."

He looked the same as the last time she had seen him, as if three years meant nothing. He had obviously seen her before she saw him, because her first sight of his face in one thousand and ninety-five days, five hours, ten minutes, and thirty-six seconds was of his dark, dilated eyes, the white pallor of his skin, the clenched tightness of his jaw, and the steel-grip of his fingers on his assault rifle.

"John Grimm," said Sarge, "handle ID—"

"Reaper," she said.

She didn't like the way her voice had come out—a low, rasping whisper, as if the shock had spread to her vocal chords. Everyone stopped everything and stared at her, and then at John Grimm.

He wasn't doing much better than she was. She could see that his normally airtight restraint was shot to hell, and everyone could see it. Even _Sarge's_ mouth was sort of hanging open.

Dawn was right. Buffy was going to kill her.

"Hello, John," said Buffy.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

"Buffy," said John. His voice, low and strained, was completely out of place with the murderous anger filling his eyes.

Buffy racked her brain for something to say, some witty one-liner that explained away three years of not seeing and not thinking about him. This was made exponentially harder by the fact that his squad was standing around staring at them while she tried to think of it. (She _so_ did not miss them looking at each other and mouthing _Buffy_?)

Problem was, Buffy had never become very proficient at coming up with probable causes. And this was John. She didn't know if she could lie to him, even after having all that time to prepare. She hadn't trusted herself to see it through the first time, and didn't know if anything had changed since then. Three years and she still hadn't come up with anything plausible that she could tell him.

The muscles in his jaw worked. His fingers tightened on his rifle and he looked as if he was about to shoot her. Buffy sort of wanted him to. She'd take a bullet over that look in his eyes any time.

She had to breathe. She had to breathe.

Buffy turned and walked over by Pinky. He was very obviously not paying attention, looking attentively down at his console. The Marines followed after a second.

"I set them up with their killcams," said Pinky. "You got one?"

"Yes," said Buffy. For all intents and purposes, she did. If a device had a signal, the Eye could use it.

"I'll get it." He tapped a few keys and then made an expression of mild surprise. "There. Huh. Looks like it's already synced with the others."

Buffy did not want to explain the technology that was the Eye. Co-developed by Dawn and Willow and only available for use by Operatives and sanctioned others associated with the Consortium, it was the sort of technology that the UAC would beg, borrow, steal, and murder to get their hands on. Also, she didn't really understand it.

No longer quite feeling as if she was going to throw up, she turned to face the Marines again. "Sarge," said Buffy, and she was pleased to hear how normal her voice sounded, "I know they didn't tell you I was coming. I'm sort of a last-minute addition. Please go on as if I wasn't here and I'll just quietly tag along, OK?"

He looked disgruntled. Marines were notorious for hating Operatives. Operatives tended to break chains of command, give conflicting orders, and generally make a soldier's life completely miserable. They had to obey, since Operatives usually got their authority from a much higher power than some two-star general on a base somewhere, but that didn't mean the Marines' CO's wouldn't take it out on them.

It probably didn't help that she was blonde, tiny, and not a dog. Buffy knew she looked as if she should be hanging out on a beach somewhere, drinking something cute with an umbrella in it and having lotion rubbed into her shoulders, which was exactly what she _would_ have been doing if she hadn't been stupid and taken Dawn's bet. The smallest Marine here—the one who'd been introduced as The Kid—was maybe twice her size and three times her weight. Destroyer could have picked her up and put her in his pack, and she was being careful not to stand directly in Sarge's shadow for fear of getting lost and never coming out again.

Their reactions were not unpredictable. Sarge looked pissed off and everyone else was surreptitiously checking her out behind John's back. It would have been more of a compliment if she hadn't known that these were testosterone-filled Marines who hadn't been on leave or even had a decent eyeful of cleavage in six months.

Buffy decided she would have to be careful. She had seen the transmissions sent from the high security labs, and Dawn had already briefed her as to what the Syndicate suspected the UAC was up to. If she wanted to get in, find what she needed, neutralize the threat, and get out, all without anyone being shot or otherwise killed and without giving the UAC time to figure out exactly who had walked into their research facility, she needed cooperation.

And now John was there. Things had become even more complicated. Not only did she have to get everything she had come for without alienating her back-up (front-up?) or letting anybody get hurt, she had to do all of that while not collapsing into tears.

Buffy couldn't understand why Dawn had done this. There were any number of other girls she could have sent, and there was no way she hadn't known John would be there. The call on the cell confirmed that. Dawn had known John would be there and she had sent Buffy to meet him. Why? If it had been for the purpose of brutally ripping open a wound that Buffy had only just begun to really get over, then Dawn had succeeded beyond all expectation.

Sarge looked at her, glanced at John, and then at her again. Obviously, he was trying to decide how to handle the unexpected turn of events. 

He settled on military tradition: don't ask, don't tell. "People," he said, "this room is a code red, which means no one gets in without our permission. It stays ours at all costs. Mac, stay here with our friend and secure the door. Men, on me. Let's move out."

Buffy followed at the rear of the group while Lt. Huengs went up to walk with Sarge. John was right behind them. She had felt his eyes move from her like a physical thing, as if a pressure had been taken off, and she couldn't help watching him as they walked, the line of his back and the set of his shoulders, the shape of his neck and throat. The stiffness in his frame, the tension of his muscles, told her that he wasn't having a much easier time of it than she was.

A strange, empty feeling had come into her stomach. Buffy tried to put a name to it, couldn't, and then ignored it.

_I have to do this. I have to do this._

No one tried to talk to her as they went up to the hatch, where Sarge told them, "Open the doors." The hatch came apart with a loud hiss, and then Mac stayed behind to close them again when they had passed through. Buffy noticed his look at her as she left.

The corridor of the main facility that led from the Ark to the atrium was bare and subdued, very corporate-looking. People stared as they went by, and whispers preceded them everywhere. Most of the attention was on the large, black-clad Marines, but when Buffy went by, there was only silence. Someone had definitely told.

The atrium was crowded and well-lit, as clean and as sterile as the rest of the facility. A huge UAC logo dominated the room. Buffy guessed that these were mostly the non-militarypersonnel stationed at Olduvai and the lower level technicians. Walking casualties, she decided, and moved up to where Huengs was talking to Sarge.

"We're at a Level 5 quarantine," Sarge was saying. "Nobody goes anywhere."

"Lieutenant," said Buffy, and they both turned to look at her. "I want all civilians and nonessential personnel brought to the Ark chamber. I also want the corridor from there to here blocked off and security stationed along it."

Huengs frowned. "Operative, almost all personnel have a major function that can't just be—"

"I don't care," said Buffy. "Unless there's a guy somewhere around here with his finger on the air button. He can stay. Someone with a gun gets to stay with him with the door locked. Everyone else—and I don't care _what_ they're doing—gets to go keep Mac company."

He actually didn't look too upset about it but looked at Sarge anyway. Sarge took a long, deep breath and nodded.

Buffy had noticed the woman standing behind a pillar watching them as soon as they'd come into the atrium. Now she saw the woman finally come into sight, looking very carefully composed, and walk straight up at them, passing Portman trying to pick up what looked like college girls. His focus immediately changed and he altered his course to walk with her.

"We're under a Level 5 quarantine, so I'm just going to have to strip—"

Sarge's "Portman!" had Portman backing off and the woman's attention came back to the Marines. Buffy did not miss the way she looked at John, and her stomach clenched in a way that reminded her of what aglutton for punishment she was, as if she hadn't known that already.

"Sergeant, Operative," said Huengs, "this is Dr. Samantha Grimm, the UAC science officer—"

Buffy closed her eyes, turned her back on the pretense that she was scanning the different exits. Bone-deep relief flooded her body. Neither of them had been much for talking about the past, but a few names had come up between them, and Samantha Grimm had been one.

"—assigned to retrieve data from the lab."

Sarge and Dr. Grimm exchanged names, and then Dr. Grimm looked at John. "Hello, John."

"Hello, Samantha," said John.

"_Hello_, Samantha," said Duke, stressing the hello part, and both Sarge and John gave him a look that had, in Buffy's experience, never been too far off from violence.

"Sarge, this operation's a code red," said John. "We really don't have room for passengers."

Buffy had forgotten how much a jerk he could be when he was worried about someone. She felt a surge of affection that she ruthlessly extinguished, and then wondered what it said about her that she missed him most when he was being a dick.

Dr. Grimm was having none of it. "Excuse me, but I have orders to retrieve data from three servers: Anthropology, Forensic Archeology, and Genetics."

John had on the most condescending expression in his arsenal. "This is a military operation, Doctor. We're really not here to retrieve your science homework."

Now Dr. Grimm looked impatient. "Look, I got an idea. Why don't you ask your CO what your orders are?"

John was having a bad day. First his ex, now his estranged sister? Nightmares were made of this kind of stuff. It said a lot that he was breaking his usually iron-clad professionalism. That'd didn't bode well for the mission at all. Buffy was fairly certain he wouldn't actually have the time or the opportunity to talk to her about anything, as she was the Operative and John's commanding officer was, like, standing right there. Then again...

John looked disbelievingly at Sarge, who was glaring at him. There was a pause while Sarge obviously tried to decide whose side he was on, as he probably didn't like the idea of civilians along for the ride any more than John did. Everyone else on the squad watched, transfixed, probably because they didn't get to see Sarge look uneasy very often.

He spoke carefully, but also by rote, like someone repeating what he had been told. "To contain and neutralize the threat, protect the civilians, and retrieve—" Here the look he gave John was almost—almost!—sympathetic. "—retrieve UAC property."

Buffy turned away as John looked thwarted, Dr. Grimm looked satisfied, and Sarge looked uncomfortable, and that was when she saw the man in the lab coat.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about him except for the expression on his face when he saw her. When a man took one look at her, turned white, and took off down a corridor, it tended to mean something, and he didn't look like anyone she'd ever dated or gone to high school with. Sighing, Buffy went after him, her own walk a leisurely stroll. Where did he think he was going to go?

Nobody tried to stop her, except for a tentative "Operative?" from Huengs, and she was three corridors away from the atrium looking at numbered doors when she heard the gunshot. Zeroing in on the sound, she came to a door marked Lab 25. Pulling out the master key card Huengs had given her, Buffy swiped it and hit the floor inside Lab 25 before the door was even half-open.

The body lay sprawled against the wall beside an off computer. The gun in his hand and the hole in the top of his head seemed to explain the situation. The wall was splattered with brains and blood.

He was plain enough in appearance. Thinning brown hair, a slight paunch, and no wedding ring. His glasses lay cracked on the floor at his limp feet.

Buffy stood looking at him for maybe thirty seconds before Sarge came charging through the door, followed by Huengs, John, and the other Marines. They all came to an abrupt halt when they saw her. Sarge's eyes went from her to the body and back to her again, and John's expression was sheer disbelief.

Dr. Grimm came in behind them, saw the body, and gasped. "Dr. Brown," she said faintly.

Buffy didn't know if the look of suspicion they were all aiming at her was an insult or not. Operatives had an ugly reputation. Still, it kind of hurt to see it on John's face.

Lab 25 was like all labs everywhere. Computers and graphs and charts covered the walls, and a table had been pushed up to the far wall. Buffy glanced at everything exactly once before she turned and started walking toward the door.

"Leave him," she said to Huengs. "I want everyone else at the Ark chamber _now_."

Everyone got out of her way as she left Lab 25. The Kid was staring at her with a particularly horrified expression, but she didn't have the time or the patience to reassure him. She had to get into the high security labs.

Buffy could tell they'd stopped to talk behind her back because she was already at the atrium when they caught up. Sarge's face told her clearly that he was liking her less and less, but, again, he didn't have to like her. John was looking at her as if he were beginning to figure something out, and she swallowed convulsively as she avoided his eyes. Whatever he was thinking, it was wrong.

She would never tell him so.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

"There are three sections to Carmack's lab complex," said Sarge.

Dr. Grimm nodded distractedly. "Archeology, Genetics, and Weapons Research."

"You test weapons up here?" asked Portman.

"Well, it's a dead planet. You want that stuff tested here, where it's safe, or in your own backyard?"

Buffy thought about the question of exactly how many people knew that the UAC's Olduvai program involved weapons testing. She was betting very few, as nothing in their public records or their more easily-accessed data files had said anything about it. Willow had mentioned it, but not as anything really important they needed to worry about. Mars was, like Dr. Grimm said, a dead planet, and they weren't doing anything really illegal as long as they kept government regulations.

"We're primarily an archaeological operation," continued Dr. Grimm. "Weapons Research is in its own separate facility. It has nothing to do with Dr. Carmack's work."

"How many inside when the lab shut down?" asked Sarge.

"Only Dr. Carmack's team. That's six people." Dr. Grimm paused, as if reluctant to go on. "In one of the carbon dating labs, there was an internal phone left off the hook."

"Did you get any information from it?".

Dr. Grimm didn't answer, but looked at Huengs. Huengs held up a recorder he'd taken from his grays and clicked it on.

Buffy was standing in the rear of the group, trying to look less like she was capable of murdering a person in cold blood and arranging the scene to look like a suicide. From her position next to the much scarier-looking Destroyer, this was surprisingly easy.

Even she could hear the screams.

There was a woman, and several men. They screamed the way nothing but unthinkable pain and fear could make people scream, and Buffy saw that no one was unaffected by it, except for her. She also saw that _they_ saw that she was unaffected by it, as if she'd heard it many times before and had become inured to the horror of anything that could elicit such noises from human throats. It wasn't anything overt—big, tough Marines weren't going to flinch at something like screaming on a recorder. It was just in their responses to it, in their suddenly very serious expressions and body language, in the way that normal people reacted to abnormal things, if not obviously, like Dr. Grimm, then subtly, like Huengs and Sarge.

Buffy just stood there, expression unchanging, listening to the screaming as if it were a news report.

As soon as it was quiet again, Huengs clicking the recorder off, Sarge nodded and said, "Open the door."

Dr. Grimm turned to the panel beside the door, card in hand. While she unlocked it, the Kid looked at Buffy.

"Did you shoot him?" He asked it abruptly, in a rush, as if he didn't want to ask the question but had been unable to resist the urge.

Buffy saw the way Sarge's head moved, knew he was rolling his eyes. The Kid was such a kid.

"No," she said. "He shot himself. Remember? He had the gun in his hand."

"Why would he do that?" the Kid asked. "When we just happened to get here?"

The plural was nice. "Maybe he finally realized that as long as there were beefcakes like Portman around, he didn't stand a chance with Dr. Grimm here and offed himself out of despair," she said cheerfully.

There was a moment where everyone just looked at her or each other, as if no one could believe an Operative would crack a joke, or maybe that anyone would crack a joke about a guy who had just ventilated his skull. Then Destroyer sniggered under his breath.

"I'll show you a beefcake," said Portman. "You want to find a corner, honey, while the boys do the work?"

"Sorry, Portman," said Buffy. "I'm out of your price range."

That got a bigger laugh, from everyone except John. He was looking back at her, and his eyes on her face made her want to run away or straight at him. She had no business being so close to the man. All those big, tough walls she had built up over three years were falling to pieces, the work of three years completely undone by a single glance.

Buffy steadied her breathing, centered herself. This was unlucky chance, that was all. They would do what they needed to do and then they would go their own separate ways. She wouldn't talk to John, and she wouldn't give him a chance to talk to her. She would be strong. She would remember why she had done what she'd done, and she would keep him shut out, even if it tore her apart to do it.

Dr. Grimm was looking at her like she wanted to say something. Buffy would have bet money that Dr. Grimm was having trouble associating what the public at large knew about Operatives with the blonde standing in front of her. At the same time, Buffy really didn't want to chat with her ex's sister. She'd never met any of John's relatives, and knew without having to be told that John had never told Dr. Grimm about her. Buffy didn't blame him, as she herself hadn't told Dawn about John until nearly a year after, and she was nowhere near as distanced from Dawn as John was from Samantha.

The hatch to the airlock opened with a burst of steam, and Sarge picked out "Portman, Goat," to lead the way. Huengs hauled the hatch open and Portman sidled through, Goat on his heels, sensors beeping in their hands as they checked the air. Goat's "All clear" sent Sarge and John into the airlock, where Sarge stepped up to the screen on the wall.

"Pinky, give us a schematic."

Buffy heard Pinky's _"Uploading to you now"_ while she watched Huengs and Dr. Grimm secure the hatch again. _"Carmack's lab is isolated from the rest of the facility. The airlock is the only way in or out."_

The screen showed a blueprint of Olduvai from the airlock, which was Airlock D4, and on, including exact locations of the Genetics Lab, Infirmary, Archeology Lab, Weapons Lab, and Research Office. There was a lot of blacked space in between, which Buffy interpreted as Places To Get Killed At. She took special notice of one particular square that seemed to denote stairs, which were probably going to be a pain in the ass to deal with.

"Goat, Portman: Genetics. Kid, Destroyer: Carmack's office, where he sent the mayday from. Reaper, keep Dr. Grimm here safe on her salvage op. Duke and I'll take the Weapons Lab, make sure all the hardware's secure." He looked at Buffy, somewhat challengingly. "Objections?"

"Yeah, actually," said Buffy. "We should not split up."

It was neat how he could look both as if he were made of patience and like he wanted to strangle her at the same time. A lot of guys just couldn't multi-task their emotions like that. "Any reason in particular?"

"They're coming outta the walls. They're coming outta the goddamn walls."

Everyone looked blank, even Goat. No one got it. _No one got it._ Buffy sighed, inexplicably depressed.

"What I mean," she said, "is that there is something in there killing scientists. That something is extremely dangerous and we should not split up so it can come and eat us one by one." She paused, thinking. "Well, you guys, at least. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be fine. But you'll get eaten. You especially, Kid."

They were Marines, all right. She could tell by how suddenly and without hesitation they instantly came together to form a single, cohesive unit of hostility against her. Only two people seemed unmoved—John, who, having been angry with her to begin with, had already been ahead of the game, and Dr. Grimm, who wavered between being sympathetic with the only other female and siding with the guys who had guns.

"You know what this is," said Sarge. He said it the same way someone else would have accused her of eating babies or sleeping with Spike. "You know what happened in there."

"I can make an educated guess," said Buffy, "and I've seen a lot of scary movies. We should not split up, especially for Destroyer's and Duke's sakes."

"I won't walk in there blind if I don't have to," said Sarge. "If you know what's in there, you'll tell us."

"Right," said Buffy, and the scorn in her voice was enough to make Dr. Grimm wince. "Because the military has such an open policy of information-sharing. I'll bet they tell you everything about every mission they send you on."

The anger in that seemed to come out of left field for him, and he only stared at her.

Buffy reminded herself how difficult it must be for a Marine to blindly take orders from someone he wasn't even sure had a rank. Whatever people called her, she still looked like a blonde chick he'd be more likely to be buying drinks for at a bar than taking life or death decisions from. She decided to soften her tone.

"I know it sucks," she said, now addressing everyone but still looking at Sarge, "but here's what I can tell you. I don't know exactly what's in there or exactly what happened, but right now I honestly think our best option is to use extreme caution. I think—and these are guesses, remember—that there is something in there killing people. I'm pretty sure it's my job to kill it and make sure there aren't any more like it. I want to get that done _without_ anyone dying. I am the only one in the Consortium with a ninety-nine percent success rate over four years at keeping my teammates alive, and I want to keep it that way. One more year and I get a watch. I want that watch, Sarge."

She wasn't sure how he was taking it, until he smiled. That smile softened his whole face and upgraded him from good-looking to unreasonably handsome. Buffy actually caught her breath.

"Is it a nice watch?" he asked, and even his voice was gentler, almost intimate.

"No," she said, thrown. "Cheap and ugly, from what I've seen. I'm not going to wear it. I just want to rub it into the other Operatives' faces."

Someone coughed, and Sarge and Buffy both turned to look at John at the same time. He looked back.

"Allergies," he said, expressionless.

Now Duke coughed, and everyone else was looking at the floor. Only the Kid looked confused.

"OK," said Buffy, "so, uh, could we not split up? Just for the sake of my nerves, even. I can't promise anything, but there might be cookies in it for you afterward."

"Fine," said Sarge, all business again. "We won't split up. We'll go from here to Genetics, then to Carmack's office. Then the Weapons Lab. Dr. Grimm, you stay in the middle and get what you need as we go by."

There were some raising of the eyebrows and widening of the eyes. Buffy got the impression that Sarge didn't often accept being overruled so well. Of course, she was an Operative. Having the full weight and backing of presidential authority seemed to have that effect on most rank and file soldiers.

"One last thing," said Buffy. "At some point, I'm probably going to get separated from you. If you can't get me on the radio for longer than fifteen minutes or I get on and tell you to run, I need everyone to turn around and run. I need you to not argue, not hesitate, and not worry about me. Grab Dr. Grimm, get through the airlock, lock it down, and evacuate everyone through the Ark. Wait for the other Operatives to get here and let them take care of things. Above all, when I tell you to run, _run_."

Now they were looking at her differently. Dr. Grimm looked even more nervous, and a vein was throbbing in John's temple. Sarge's eyebrow was raised again.

"What the hell," asked Duke, "is in there? I never heard an Operative talk like that."

"This mission is starting to smell pretty bad," added Portman, and, at Sarge's look, "Not that I got a problem with it."

John said nothing, and Buffy stopped herself from thinking on that any further. Knowing the answer, whatever it was, wouldn't help her.

The Marines went through a last check, cocking their guns and nodding their readiness. Dr. Grimm looked pale but resolute, and also very, very civilian in her painfully white clothes. Buffy considered sending her back to change into something less Hello, I Am a Victim.

"You said ninety-nine percent," said Duke. "What happened to the one?"

"He didn't do what I asked him to," said Buffy. "I managed to find all the pieces and put them in a box so his wife could have something to bury."

As Portman and Goat went forward to open the hatch that led to the isolated labs, Buffy took a black beanie out of her duster and pulled it on over her hair. Destroyer looked at her.

"I'm being sneaky," she explained.

Destroyer laughed, a deep, booming sound that she thought could also come from a grizzly bear, and Sarge glanced at her again with something like half a smile, that soft look in his eyes that made her cheeks pink.

Then someone moved up behind her and she knew it was John because she would never, not for the rest of her life forget the way he moved, the faint noise of his breathing, the smell of him, his heartbeat. She felt him standing there like a line of heat along her back and her legs, knew he was looking down at her with an expression that made Duke and Destroyer exchange worried looks and Dr. Grimm look wide-eyed from Buffy to John to Buffy again, her trained, scientist's brain working at Ark speed. She felt the tension like a vibration in the air, how he wanted to speak and how everything seemed to get caught in his throat.

She imagined the look on his face, the expression of anger, confusion, and hurt.

Goat opened the hatch with a shove, and was first into the gloom, the light on his rifle flashing white, Portman at his back. Sarge went through third.

Buffy sighed. "I guess this is better than Tahiti," she muttered, "if I were, you know, crazy."

She adjusted her beanie, checked her hair, straightened her duster, and went through the hatch.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

The gloom of the facility beyond Airlock D4 was broken only by the blue flare of emergency lights. Buffy, a veteran of cemeteries, abandoned warehouses, caves, sewers, and hell dimensions, thought she'd never seen anything more likely to be a prime location for an ambush. There was more grating in this one corridor off the airlock than there'd been in Dawn's mouth the two years she'd had braces. Did they really need this much open piping? Buffy hadn't noticed any Italian plumbers on the personnel lists. She was also pretty sure that a few of these things were steaming for no particular reason at all.

Buffy made a mental note to stop hanging out with Andrew.

Portman's "Clear left" and Goat's "Clear right" seemed unnecessarily loud as Buffy stepped onto the grating. Almost immediately she thought she heard something off to their right, like the low rumblings of a gurgling pipe. She had just turned her head to triangulate the noise when Portman opened his mouth.

"Five bucks says this shit ain't nothing but a disgruntled employee with a gun."

The noise cut off, became a scuffle from almost below their feet. Buffy held up her hand and got abrupt silence as every Marine stilled in place and Dr. Grimm hesitated. There were definitely perks to working with trained professionals.

She listened to the thing stay still for maybe three seconds, and then heard the almost imperceptible noises of movement at the edges of her hearing as it went up the corridor, disappearing into the black.

"It knows we're here," she said, her voice low, almost a whisper, and it occurred to her that the next time she went anywhere, it would be with a few of Andrew's sub-vocal communication devices.

"Square formation," said Sarge. "Dr. Grimm, take the middle. Operative—"

"Point," she said, and moved to take lead. 

She felt the tension thrum through the entire squad, the Marines looking at each other and then at Sarge. Buffy could almost hear their train of thought. On the one hand, she was the Operative, which meant that she was technically in command of the squad above even Sarge, and hopefully meant that she knew what she was doing. On the other hand, she was like knee-high to anyone else there and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet in full battle dress. It really was understandable that they should hesitate.

To her unvoiced relief, Sarge didn't argue, just took position next to her. Without looking, Buffy knew John was at her back.

"Genetics first," said Sarge. "Fluorescent markings as rooms are cleared. Go."

Their footsteps echoed maddeningly as they went forward. Buffy thought about giving the Secretary of Defense a call, suggesting that granny socks should be made standard issue. Dr. Grimm was making less noise than they were. A squad of Andrews would have made less noise. There was no way Buffy was ever going to hear anything coming up on them, especially if it was as quiet as the thing that had noticed them come in.

Genetics was almost right around the corner, the green and white sign blinding in the dark. The door opened without a fuss and they filed in, Buffy first. Goat's softly uttered "What the fuck?" seemed to nicely sum up the beating heart and various organs in glass tubes.

The place stank of blood and guts. Buffy took everything in at a glance, felt her heart sink. Dawn was getting into a really annoying habit of always being right. Couldn't she get something wrong just every five years or so, if for no other reason than to make her sister happy? Would that be too much to ask?

Goat whispered, "Pinky, you getting this?"

_"Jesus. Very cool."_

Buffy was looking at two severed, nonhuman arms held up next to each other. "I would have gone with 'ewww,' myself."

Portman shined his light over what looked like a cage and the Kid whispered "God!"

These were animal cages, Buffy saw, but there were no animals in them. Instead the things were a mess of meat and blood, strewn bits of bone and flesh and fur piled in glops or hanging from the wires. The cages were mostly bent open, torn apart in a frenzy, pieces of animals caught in the broken metal.

"Oh, my God," whispered Dr. Grimm. She was staring at the cages. "What...? I don't understand."

Sarge frowned at the mess. "Psychotic break?" he suggested.

"Sure," said Buffy, straightening up. "Hey, is there any way we can lock the door as we leave? Maybe seal it?"

"I'll do it," said Dr. Grimm. "Do you think you know what happened?"

"I have a theory," said Buffy, "which I'm not going to share right now in case I'm wrong and end up looking stupid. There's nothing in here. Lock up and let's go."

They filed out again, waiting for Dr. Grimm to punch in her code to seal the door until someone with a higher security clearance happened by. Buffy had out a small device on which she was typing with one hand.

"That'll probably work better if you turn it on," said Portman, and she looked up to see him peering over her shoulder.

"It is on," she said, and put it back in her duster.

_"There's another room to the north. Past Genetics."_

"Copy," said Sarge. "You realize this is going to take too long," he said to her.

"I'd rather be slow and alive than quick and dead," said Buffy. "Pinky, has Huengs set up the block yet?"

_"Yes, actually. I'm up to the ears in crying infants and complaining scientists. I think Mac's about to shoot somebody."_

"Tell him it's going to come out of his paycheck," said Buffy. "Let's go."

Buffy listened hard as they moved down the corridor, but finally had to give up and conclude that she was not going to be able to track anything through this particular herd of gun-toting elephants. There'd be no use complaining either because this was RRTS, trained for fast entry and fast exit, not much about their jobs requiring covert ops. They came in to blow things up, not sneak around in the dark. She was going to have to strike out on her own at some point if she wanted to get the thing prowling in the black, and in the meantime hope she'd see it coming.

They came to an unmarked door exactly where Pinky said it would be, and it accessed as easily as Genetics had. As soon as the doors opened, Buffy's head filled with a loud buzzing that felt as if someone had shoved a beehive up her nose. She recognized it as static, the hum of electricity, and felt a moment of panic for her hair.

In the middle of a large and mostly empty room, there was a huge pit in the floor. The pit was where the static was coming from, and in it there was basically a desk with a computer on it. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and Buffy pulled out the device Portman had noticed and aimed it like a camera.

"What the hell is that?" asked that same Marine.

Goat snorted. "You never did time, Portman?"

Portman almost looked offended. "What?"

"Seriously?" asked Duke. "Not even for abuse of farm animals, maybe?"

Buffy crouched at the edge of the pit, squinting down at the computer.

"This is a holding cell," said Goat.

"Bullshit," said Portman, crouching beside Buffy. "What makes you think that?"

"Touch it."

Buffy looked at Portman and Portman looked at Buffy. She wasn't sure what her expression was, but she didn't expect him to actually do it and so barely caught his hand in time when he reached for the edge of the pit.

"Don't," she said, gripping his hand an inch away from the edge. "Come on, Portman. Even you're smarter than that."

"I like where this is going," said Portman, rubbing his hand against hers. "Been dying to get your hot little hands on me, Operative?"

Buffy jerked her hand down, breaking contact with Portman just as his hand cracked into the edge of the pit and an arc of blue-white electricity shot him in the fingers. He jumped up and nearly a foot back, howling in pain.

Duke and the Kid burst out laughing, Destroyer cracking a grin.

"The walls are electrified," said Goat, and he laughed for the first time Buffy had seen or heard.

"You asshole," snarled Portman, but he said it to Goat. To Buffy he just gave a particularly disgusting grin. "Like to play rough, sweetheart?" he asked, tone positively lewd. "I'm into that."

Buffy rolled her eyes, stood up. "More of your genetics research, Dr. Grimm?"

Dr. Grimm was looking more and more like she wished she'd been able to find someone else to be left holding the bag on this one. "It's not possible," she said. "We never did any human experimentation."

"I guess the government's not the only one Carmack's been lying to," said Buffy. "I've seen enough. Let's go."

They exited the pit chamber, Dr. Grimm stopping to lock and seal the door at Buffy's request and the Kid marking it with a huge fluorescent X.

They checked out a series of smaller, unoccupied rooms as they made their way through the facility towards Research, moving in slow, cautious stages. As point, Buffy got to do most of the peering around corners and stepping first into rooms. Very soon, her nonchalantly bare hands and lack of flashlight began making people very nervous.

"Operative," said Sarge. "You want to draw your weapon any time soon? Maybe before you get killed."

"Are you kidding?" said Buffy. She held up her hands. "These are deadly weapons right here. Fists of fury, and also good cuticle care. Chuck Norris would pee himself. Manicurists fight each other for the privilege of working on them."

Sarge stared at her as if she'd lost her mind.

"Don't worry about me, Sarge," said Buffy a little more seriously. "Worry about your men. Remember, I'm the one eighty-seven percent more likely to survive this than you. I know because I just made that statistic up."

Buffy's relentless joking seemed to put at least the Kid and Dr. Grimm more at ease. The older Marines looked worried, like they were beginning to think Sarge had unwittingly let a crazy person pretty much take charge of the squad.

Despite any doubts they might have as to her sanity or lack thereof, they didn't say anything and let her keep point as they carried on. Somewhere between a utility closet and Carmack's office, they found a bloody piece of lab coat. Buffy picked it up and held it to Sarge's rifle light, and Dr. Grimm's face became just a little more strained.

"Where the hell is everybody?" whispered the Kid, and this seemed to be a similar concern with all of them.

"Dr. Grimm," said Buffy, "where is the computer you need to get to?"

"The Archeology Lab," said Dr. Grimm. "I can access everything I need from there."

At the other end of the complex. Of course it was. "We'll go straight there after Research."

Buffy turned to take point again and that was when she saw something moving up ahead.

Her hiss of "Stop!" brought everything to a standstill. Three rifle lights converged on the same bend in the corridor at once, and everyone saw the small, white shape rush away into the black.

"Do not move," said Buffy, and then she was around the corner and the white lights were fading behind her.

The thing moved fast. Buffy had to put more into it and be less careful than she'd have liked in the steam and the dark. From the transparent schematic the Eye was projecting over her field of vision, she could see that the thing was heading for Carmack's office. The door came into view right after that, and she saw that it was a mess of battered and wrenched metal, torn apart in a way no human hands could do. The thing almost made it inside before Buffy snagged a fistful of bloody, yellowed lab coat and jerked it off its feet.

Dr. Carmack hit the grating on his back, dropping the severed hand he'd been holding. He gibbered incoherently, twitching and spasming like a rabid dog, and his eyes were huge and dilated. Buffy, looking down at him, was almost too slow to stop him from biting a finger off.

A glance into the Research Office showed it to be trashed, full of broken glass and mangled equipment. There wasn't anything in there he could have been going back to.

The man was deranged, or at least severely traumatized. He kept trying to mutilate himself. Stripping off her duster, she emptied its pockets while holding the struggling Carmack down with one foot on his folded arms. Getting everything out of it, she then wrestled the duster onto Carmack backwards, tying the sleeves together into a makeshift straitjacket. He moaned and rasped and even howled as she did it, and only quieted down when she picked up the severed hand he'd been carrying and began dragging him by the sleeves back the way they'd come.

To her shock, RRTS was exactly where she'd left them. She stood around the corner and called out "Don't fire!" before actually walking out into open space, as she totally did not trust the Kid to not shoot her out of nerves. Their expressions at seeing her were varied degrees of relief, from the Kid, who looked like a five-year-old who had just found his mom in the department store again, to Sarge, who seemed not disappointed to see her alive, until all of that was replaced by one uniform look of alarm at the sight of the hand she was holding and what she dragged behind her.

"Dr. Carmack," Dr. Grimm gasped, and she would have hurried forward if John had not stopped her. She pushed him off rather forcefully. "What—what happened? Dr. Carmack—"

Buffy dumped him at Sarge's feet, bidding a last farewell to her second-favorite duster. "Guy's freaked," she said. "Don't let him loose or he'll—"

Dr. Grimm had taken a knee next to Carmack, loosening the duster to get him some air and incidentally just enough room to get an arm loose. With a long, drawn-out whine, Carmack reached up and tore off his own left ear.

"—do that," Buffy finished.

"Jesus Christ," gasped Dr. Grimm, and Duke muttered a "Damn!" Portman, the sick bastard, started laughing. "Nice!"

"Get a med kit," said Dr. Grimm, and was handed one by John. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said to Carmack, ripping open the kit.

Buffy wasn't paying attention. She was looking up and down the corridor, her lips pursed. "Sarge," she said, "I think we should get to the Infirmary."

"Agreed," said Sarge. "Should we look for the body?"

"No," said Buffy. "I'm pretty sure whoever owned that hand is dead, and I'm not interested in corpses." She paused. Was that a Freudian slip? "Everyone sticks together. We'll make it to the Infirmary first, and then we'll discuss things."

The Kid got to carry the doctor because he was the newbie. Buffy was moving past everyone to take up point again when someone's rifle light shone over her and Portman hissed "Jesus!"

Buffy stopped, alert, but he was staring at her. She looked around and realized that everyone else was as well, and glanced down at herself.

Oh. Yeah.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

Getting Carmack into the duster had not been quite the no-brainer that inflicting casual violence on helpless, traumatized old men usually was. He'd bit and scratched and clawed and generally messed up her day, hair, and clothes, not to mention getting blood, spit, and what she hoped wasn't but suspected was puke all over her. She hadn't noticed that, in all the commotion, he'd managed to put a good rip in her black sweater, tearing it open from collar to just below her breast.

The wound was still red and raw, barely healed over. The stitches were still in it, black and ugly, and made it look like something out of a bad horror movie. The broken flesh went from the bottom of her left shoulder blade to the crook of her neck and down again diagonally through her chest to stop just short of her right breast, as if someone had taken a cleaver and made a huge effort at chopping her open at the junction of neck and shoulder.

Which, actually, was pretty much what had happened. Buffy mostly remembered hot, blinding pain, the Slayer she'd been with screaming hysterically, witches and medics shouting and pushing people away from her, and the cold, awful certainty that she was never going to get to see John again. Waking up five days later in her own bed to see Xander sitting in a chair at her side with a week's worth of stubble on his chin was one of the biggest shocks of her life.

That had been nearly a month earlier, but for some reason it was just refusing to heal. Normally, if Buffy survived an injury, her body repaired on its own, quickly and without a trace—but not this time. She felt normal enough, could lift heavy objects, bend and stretch however she wanted, wipe the floor with three Slayers at a time, do PT, walk the dog, and generally be a Slayer without feeling a twinge, but the wound remained naked, and reopened and bled if the stitches were taken out. No one could figure out why, or at least Buffy couldn't. She suspected the others knew. Dawn had taken to bursting into tears whenever she saw it, and Faith had hugged Buffy more often in the last three weeks than in the last forty years combined. Willow and Xander didn't say anything, as if they thought that if they ignored it, it would go away on its own. If any of them knew, they weren't telling. Buffy herself stopped wearing low-cut shirts and forgot about it.

Except now, Portman's rifle light was burning a white circle into her skin, spotlighting what should have been her third and final death for everyone to see.

"Jesus Christ, Operative," he said, for once not looking lecherous or perverted at all. "What the fuck did that to you?"

Sarge's eyes were wide. Everybody's eyes were wide. Even Carmack had quieted down and lay whimpering on the grating.

Buffy was trying not to look at John. She reached up and meaningfully pulled a loose piece of her sweater over the wound, covering it up again.

"Angry puppy," she said, and pushed by Portman to take point.

They didn't ask questions. They just followed her out, Sarge at her side and John behind her, the only noises Carmack's gibbering, their boots on the grating, and the dripping, steaming, and clanking of the facility.

The strange sounds Buffy kept hearing were coming closer. She was almost surprised that no one else had noticed yet. Growls, rumblings, and the smell of blood everywhere, though she couldn't see any. It got worse as they neared the Infirmary, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled the same way they did when she was walking into a nest of vampires. Things were moving in the black, still staying out of sight but coming closer every second, each foot it closed between them done with measured calculation.

They were being stalked.

The way to the Infimary was clear, and Buffy approached less cautiously than she should have. When the wall flashed transparent and a short figure in white rushed out, Buffy had it by the neck and against the side of the tunnel before she heard Dr. Grimm shouting.

"Wait, wait! Operative!" Dr. Grimm grabbed her arm. "Stop! It's Dr. Willits! It's Dr. Willits!"

Buffy hesitated. A dark-haired woman, eyes wide with fear, was choking quietly in her grip, feet dangling off the ground.

"Oh," she said, and let go, backing off as Dr. Grimm supported Dr. Willits and kept her from collapsing. The woman turned out to be a few inches taller than Buffy was, though not too many. "God. I'm so sorry! I'll never get used to those stupid nanowalls."

Dr. Willits nodded frantically, as if afraid Buffy would choke her again if she didn't accept her apology. Dr. Grimm frowned at her somewhat accusingly.

Embarrassed, Buffy glanced at the Marines. "Shut up," she said, though no one had spoken, and turned away to step through the nanowall.

A glance confirmed the Infirmary was clear, and then Dr. Grimm was helping Dr. Willits through, followed by Sarge, John, and everyone else, Destroyer bringing up the rear as he covered the corridor. When the nanowall was solid again, relief flooded Buffy's whole body and she felt the tension ease from her shoulders.

She glanced at Carmack, being hauled onto a gurney by the Kid and Goat.

"Did they find the others?" Dr. Willits was asking Dr. Grimm. They were pulling on gloves and moving various medical machines closer to Carmack.

"Not yet," said Dr. Grimm, distracted.

Dr. Willits pressed her lips together, and then got that certain look on her face. "My husband is with them."

Dr. Grimm hesitated, and then looked at _Buffy_, of all people. Buffy raised her eyebrows, but Dr. Willits was looking at her now and Buffy decided that the first thing that came to mind—"Let's hope he's dead"—would probably get her shot.

"We're still looking," she said alternatively. "He's probably staying put behind a locked door with the other doctors waiting for help. Like the locker room, or maybe one of the labs. I'm guessing he's bored, hot, and really needs to pee."

Buffy realized she was going to burn in hell for telling such lies, but Dr. Willits's smile was so grateful and sweet that she just didn't have the heart to do anything else. Dr. Grimm smiled too, a small, shy smile like she was trying to communicate how glad she was that Buffy had opted to put off breaking Dr. Willits's heart and destroying her life.

Now embarrassed _and_ feeling like a tool, Buffy turned away from where they worked on Dr. Carmack and focused on the Marines.

"Sarge," she said, "I'm going to take Dr. Grimm and get her to the Archeology Lab and back. Everyone else, I want you to stay here and aim at the door the entire time we're gone." She paused. "Except Sarge," she added. "Sarge gets to watch Dr. Carmack."

Dr. Grimm looked up, and that was when Dr. Carmack lunged forward and grabbed Dr. Grimm by the shoulders.

Buffy's "Stop!" and Dr. Grimm's "It's OK!" were probably the only things that kept Carmack from being shot full of holes. Carmack was hanging onto Dr. Grimm like his life depended on it, and his eyes were, for the first time, clear and rational.

"Dr. Carmack," said Dr. Grimm, voice even, as if she were talking to a nervousanimal, "it's me. Samantha. You're in the Infirmary. I'm taking your blood pressure." If she saw all the guns pointed in her general direction, she ignored them, obviously putting more stock in their control than Buffy did.

Carmack breathing was accelerated and shallow, When he spoke, it was in a wheezing, stammering gasp. "I can feel it." He shivered, but his eyes were fixed on Dr. Grimm. "Shut it, shut it down. Shut it down. S-shut it down."

He fell back against the gurney, a limp, shaking mess, blood still dripping from where his ear had been. "It's inside, it's inside..."

Buffy moved up slowly, but he still heard her. His eyes locked on her and then, loosing a bloodcurdling shriek, he jerked back and crashed to the floor, overturning the gurney and knocking Dr. Grimm back. Medical instruments and glass showered the floor.

_"No,"_ he screamed. _"No, they know, they know, they sent her—they sent the Original—"_

Duke stepped forward and Buffy held up her hand, stopping him. Dr. Grimm and Dr. Willits had gotten clear of the debris, and all the Marines were behind her. Buffy kept moving, one deliberate, slow step at a time.

Carmack had come up against the cubicle in the middle of the room, was huddled against it whining and gurgling. Buffy stopped still several feet away and then crouched, putting her on eye level with him.

"They sent you," he whimpered, "they sent you, the Oldest, the Original...they know what I did, they knew all along...they watched and watched and that's what they do, those Watchers...they know, they know, they sent you..."

"You can't blame anyone but yourself," said Buffy. Her voice was soft, girlish, as if she were talking to a child. "You turned your back on us. You got greedy. That was all right, but what you did after? Not all right. We would have left you alone if you hadn't done that. Now it's too late, and I'm here to clean up your mess." She sighed.

His ankle was in her hand before anyone knew she'd moved, and she pulled him three feet away before he went back to shrieking. Through a paralyzed silence broken only by his screams, Buffy dragged Carmack to the other side of the Infirmary and slung him through an open glass door, keying it shut in time for him to crack his head against it as he tried to rush out. She watched him thrash around in the enclosed space for several seconds before curling up in a corner, moaning and shaking and gibbering.

"No one lets Carmack out," said Buffy. "No one goes in. If he does manage to get out, you shoot him."

She turned, looked directly at every person there. "Is that understood?"

No one didn't nod, and she could see that, for the first time, they weren't seeing her.

They were seeing the Operative.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doom belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and the people at Id Software/Universal Pictures, respectively.

Sarge was looking at her.

Buffy was inspecting her sweater, trying to decide if it was salvageable and if she wanted to make the effort. The temperature in the Infirmary was normal, but in the tunnels it was hot, humid, and cramped. The black shirt she wore under the sweater was more comfortable but bared her neck and arms, heightening her visibility. It also left fewer places to hide things, like lip gloss or inexplicably nonfatal injuries.

Taking off her beanie, Buffy tossed it on top of the counter in front of her and removed a long, thin cylindrical object from the back of her head. Blonde hair piled down onto her shoulders, and she pulled her fingers through it to get out the hot, scratchy feeling. The cylinder she placed on the counter, beside everything else she'd been carrying in her duster.

Buffy could feel them looking at the ragged tear in her body. The Infirmary lights were hard and white, unforgiving, and she'd seen in the reflective glass of the small room she'd put Carmack in how raw and red the wound was, how black the stitches. She knew she looked as if she'd escaped from a lab where an experiment had gone horribly, sickeningly wrong. Dr. Willits had taken a look and actually gagged.

More than anything, Buffy wanted to go home. She wanted to crawl into bed, pull a blanket over herself, and hide for a few months. Of all the squads in all the units, why did she have to walk into John's?

"You're bleeding," said Sarge.

Buffy looked up. Sarge was standing right next to her, his gun slung over his shoulder. He wasn't looking at her face.

Buffy looked down. She didn't see anything. Then she felt a light, soft touch on her back, below the right shoulder blade, and looked around to see Sarge holding out the blood-smeared fingers of his right hand.

"Oh," said Buffy. The stitches had probably loosened again. She looked around for one of the doctors, but they were both just walking into one of the examination rooms. She sighed. "Doctors. Always too many until you need one."

Pulling at her shirt, Buffy had just gotten to her feet to go get Dr. Grimm (she couldn't bear to look into Dr. Willits's eyes and see the evidence of her lies and deceit again) when Sarge told her, "Sit down."

Buffy sat down. Sarge was obviously Sarge for a reason.

He didn't hesitate at all, just took the hem of her shirt and pulled it up to expose her lower back. Despite his very professional, impersonal touch, Buffy was somehow embarrassed. It could have been that John was standing right there, watching everything with abruptly narrowed eyes, or it could have been that all the other Marines were suddenly very interested in what was happening in that part of the room.

"What the hell, Operative?" said Portman, leering. "You like rank, that it? Stripes on the arm get you off?"

Buffy retaliated without thinking. "Maybe if you could get your arm as big as Sarge's, you wouldn't have to pay for all your dates."

There was a lot of loud jeering. Buffy could _feel_ Sarge's eyebrow go up.

The jeering came to rather an unexpected stop when Sarge started working. He'd found a needle and some sutures from somewhere in the Infirmary, as well as a pair of surgical gloves, and washed his hands. Then, he proceeded to snap and remove the loose sutures before putting in new ones in the section that had started to come apart. The practiced manner in which he went about it suggested prior training in at least field first aid.

Buffy held as still as she could. The pain came nowhere near her threshold, barely noticeable for most older Slayers. In fact, it almost tickled, especially when Sarge's fingertips brushed her skin.

The fact that it didn't bother her seemed to be bothering everyone else. The Kid turned away almost immediately, followed soon after by Duke. Portman and Goat watched for a few minutes before getting bored, while Destroyer averted his eyes out of what Buffy suspected was sheer good manners.

John stood watching for several long minutes, until the silence could have been cut with a plastic butter knife. Finally, he turned his back and walked away, toward the room Carmack had been dumped in.

Buffy could almost feel the pressure building beneath John's skin. She knew he'd been doing everything he could to ignore her, to pretend she wasn't there and this was just any other mission, but it was pushing his limits. He both wanted to talk to her and to be anywhere but where she was—she could see it in every line, every muscle, hear it in everything he didn't say. But she was the Operative and he was a Marine, and they were on the job. His professionalism was at war with his personal need.

He had always been like that. Always at work, always focused, never switching off. Until—and it had taken her _so long_ to understand this—until her. Until John had met her, and then work had just seemed less and less important, less and less like his life until the day he'd come to the end of his enlistment and told her he didn't want to re-up. That he wasn't going to sign again. That he would rather find work as a security consultant somewhere and get a house.

That he wanted her more than he wanted what had once been more important than anything else.

"They still talk about you down at HQ," said Sarge.

Buffy came back with a mental twitch. How long had Sarge been talking to her? "Um…oh?"

"They used to give lectures on you," he said. His eyes were fixed on the stitches he was putting in. "At the briefings on the Consortium. Operative 000, Triple Zero. My sergeant said he met you on ops in Hong Kong. He talked about you like you were God. Nothing you couldn't do."

Hong Kong had been three years earlier, when U.S. and Chinese covert ops had gotten together in an unprecedented joint operation to wipe out the Chen branch of the Triads, who had incidentally been using demons to do their dirty work, which was where she'd come in. The only thing about that particular mission that she remembered with any clarity was coming back from it to her apartment and putting all of John's stuff in a box to mail to him.

Sarge seemed to take her silence to mean something else and changed the subject. "Is it true that you dated General Finn?"

Buffy couldn't help laughing, a short, girlish burst of surprise. "Where did you hear that?"

"I heard his wife can't stand you," said Sarge. "I think they still talk about that Christmas party at the White House."

That had been one unbelievably embarrassing incident that Buffy was never going to live down. The passage of time had not, it seemed, made Samantha Finn, Sam to her constituents, any less jealous than she'd been when she was younger. Standing next to a seventy-something-year-old four-star general while his wife yelled at him in front of nearly the entire Executive branch had been an experience Buffy had since considered having magically wiped from her memory.

"Just so you know, that is totally not true," said Buffy. "Well, I mean, it was, but that was a long time ago, eons before…I mean, they weren't together when…um…"

Buffy stammered to a stop. Sarge's hands had gone still, and he seemed to be staring at the back of her head. Her cheeks felt hot.

"I mean, no," said Buffy. "No. That is not true at all."

Trying not to seem too awkward, Buffy glanced around the Infirmary, making sure no one had wandered off. Portman, Goat, and the Kid were talking by the surgical bed, voices lowered. Destroyer was inspecting his rifle in the seat behind the counter, and Duke was hanging over Dr. Grimm's shoulder while she sat at the computer terminal in the attached office with Dr. Willits.

John stood at Carmack's window, looking at Dr. Grimm and Duke with a faint frown on his face.

Sarge's hand pressed into her waist.

He'd come to the lowest point of the wound, where the stitches had to be as small as possible. With the side of one hand, the one holding the needle, he had pushed her forward at the nape of her neck, while steadying her with his other hand on her waist.

Her breath caught.

For a moment, almost in between heartbeats, she felt him feel it too—a brief, tensing hesitation, his hand tightening on her skin—

—and then he pulled back, breaking contact.

"Got it," he said, and his voice seemed to have become almost imperceptibly deeper.

He stood up, heading toward the counter to dispose of the gloves and wash his hands again, and Buffy was left sitting there with her brain screaming _What was that? What was that?_ Reflexively, she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, and didn't see anyone watching.

_What happened? _Buffy's face felt hot. It was really very strange. She hadn't reacted that way to anyone since…since…

Her stomach clenched.

The place where he had placed his hand on her flesh trembled with the memory of it.

Heart sinking, Buffy thought, _I really am a moron_.

At the counter, washing his hands, Sarge's back seemed like a wall of muscle holding up his rifle.

The Christmas party had been nearly five years earlier. Not many people knew that she'd been there. The Hong Kong op had been very quiet, with downwards of ten people knowing about her involvement. There were maybe eight people in the world who knew that her numeric tag in the Consortium was 000. And only the heads of the CIA, the FBI, MI5, DIS, and maybe one other person in the Joint Chiefs knew that her internal classification was Triple Zero.

Only someone who had been paying attention, who had been watching closely and for a long while, would know those things about her.

She looked at Sarge, at his back turned to her.

From across the Infirmary, from the opposite side of the room, through the silence, the glass, and the dark waiting for her on the other side of the nanowall, she felt John turn his head, his eyes on her.


End file.
